With the Justice Department in a period of flux and uncertainty following the unceremonious dismissal of Attorney General Pam Bondi, one of her associates has made a brutal admission to the press about the floundering mission to use the full weight of the DOJ to go after President Donald Trump's political opponents.
The revelation was flagged by Finn Hartnett of The New Republic in an analysis released Wednesday.
"As part of an article on Todd Blanche’s time as acting attorney general, CNN asked Chad Mizelle, Pam Bondi’s former chief of staff, why her 'Weaponization Working Group' — which tried to investigate former government prosecutors Trump believed were politically motivated — never produced anything substantial," wrote Hartnett. "'Part of the reason the weaponization work has been difficult is that you need people who are MAGA and who are really competent,' Mizelle said. 'Many career prosecutors are not interested in this kind of work. It’s a very small group of people.'"
That remark, wrote Hartnett, "is a perfect encapsulation of one of the few joys one can take from our present political situation: Trump’s staff is simply too dumb to carry out most of their assignments."
This comes as a number of the Trump administration's prosecution efforts against political opponents of the president have crashed and burned, most notably the Virginia-based cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James — which failed because a judge ruled the inexperienced prosecutor put in charge wasn't lawfully appointed.
It also comes as the administration seeks to launch new such cases against entities opposed by the Republican Party, with this week seeing wire fraud charges being filed against the extremist monitoring group the Southern Poverty Law Center — a case experts have flagged as weak.
